Why Every ADC Player Should Play Jhin

Or any LoL player who likes the unique play-style of Ionia's gruesome virtuoso. I just recently put more time into the champion myself and love what he brings to the team. It's important to note that Jhin is the second marksmen to feature a reloading auto attack. This is imperative in understanding and utilizing Jhin's kit to its full potential.

"Our performance begins."

This won't be a reveal of the champ as he's been out for almost half of a year, and most of you reading this have already played Jhin, thought about playing him, or have played against him. With that being said, let's get into the kit overview to understand what we're working with:

Passive: Whisper - Jhin has four auto attacks until he has to reload. The final auto is guaranteed to critically strike, plus a percentage of the targets missing health as bonus AD.

Now things will get weird. Jhin's crit is reduced by 25% but has bonus effects. Every time Jhin crits he gets a burst of 10% movement speed, which is increased by 4% for every 10% of attack speed. tl;dr buying attack speed will increase the burst of movement speed you get every time you crit.

On top of this, Jhin get increased attack damage per level: 2%-40% based on level, plus 4% per 10% crit chance, and plus 2.5% per 10% bonus attack speed. tl;dr again, you are rewarded for buying crit/attack speed items, like you should!

Q: Dancing Grenade - Point and click AD ability and the heart of Jhin's DPS output. It will bounce to up to 3 additional targets (4 total). If Dancing Grenade kills a target, it will do 25% more damage to the next target which increases with each successful target kill. Dancing Grenade will also prioritize enemy champions if they are close enough during the bounce animation.

Uses:

-Farming minion waves under tower

-Sneaking in a 75% damage increased 4th bounce onto your enemy laner

- Close combat teamfight where the enemy team is clumped

- Auto attack reset, specifically in 1v1 scenarios where you need to maximize your damage output in a short period of time.

W: Deadly Flourish - Passive Caught Out marks enemy champions for 4 seconds every time Jhin or an ally uses damaging abilities or basic attacks. Deadly Flourish's active fires a long ranged skill shot similar to Jinx's Zap, but it differs in that it passes through enemy monsters and stops at the first enemy champion struck, rooting champions marked with Deadly Flourish's passive.

Uses:

-I max 2nd in the 3 primary abilities because of the sniping synergy with Deathfire Touch, it can catch low health enemies backing, forcing them to blow summoner spell heal, actives, or die to the damage over time from DT. Secondly, by maxing W second, your root duration is at a whopping 1.75 seconds.

-Shoving the wave

-Assisting in gank attempts (this is where Jhin acts as an assassin.)

E: Captive Audience - Passive Beauty in Death creates blooming lotus traps whenever Jhin gets a kill. The trap is created on the gray-screened enemy's champion, and since in bloom will slow and reveal all enemies. Traps detonate after 2 seconds, doing some magic damage plus magic damage based on a percentage of your max AD. Actively, Jhin can place these lotus traps, giving temporary vision of the area around the trap. These actively placed traps stealth after a brief delay.

Uses:

- An alternate ward. Although it doesn't give extended sight, it will give vision of the clumsy jungler who paths over the flower in attempt to gank.

-Lane control. When you're level 3 as Jhin, you can potentially have all 3 abilities available. Give that level 3 Jhin a Leona support and you could potentially have someone locked down for over 2 seconds.

-Map control. A team playing around the Jhin means playing off of traps that are far enough away to give the enemy a false sense of comfort, but close enough to collapse when Jhin lands his W.

R: Curtain Call - Jhin loves the number 4. He fires 4 auto attacks before reloading, his Q bounces to hit a total of 4 targets, and although I have yet to understand where the number 4 lies in Captive Audience, his Ult does indeed follow suit in the magic number.

On initial cast, creates a cone-like area that reveals all Caught Out targets. For the next 10 seconds, Jhin can fire up to 4 shots (any shot not fired reduces the cooldown of Curtain Call by 10% for each shot.) Each shot does damage to all enemies hit, but like Deadly Flourish, it will stop at the first enemy champion hit. It can do damage to clumped enemies. Damaged enemies are slowed, making them easier targets if they don't have flash. To make matters worse (or better) the damage from shots fired is increased by 2% by 1% of targets missing health (HELP). So try not to get hit!

Oh, and like Jhin's auto attack passive, the fourth shot also critically strikes but does even more based on Jhin's bonus critical damage.

Uses:

-When your team is ahead and the enemy has no slippery assassins. You channel during this ultimate, which leaves you susceptible to an AD Carry's worst nightmare: Assassins. If they have none of these evil doers, you're pretty free to open a teamfight with this long range ultimate. You are banking on hitting your shots, so don't miss! The slow will give your team plenty of opportunity to land CC and burst down targets, giving you the map advantage to take what you want.

-When your team is even or behind. Hold your ultimate! Jhin players want long teamfights. They want to land as many 4th autos and W roots to turn the tides of a fight. When you finally have the enemy on the run, most of them have used their ultimates and are below half health. Get a good angle and hit R. Even if you don't get a kill from playing this way, you're likely to get some summoner spells and have the map advantage afterwards.

A lot to take in, huh? Jhin has developed a lot since he was released. Players at the highest level are showcasing just how powerful he can be. Personally I would call him a control marksman. His weakness is found in his unreliable mobility in the early game. You're practically gambling on a crit with your Brawler's Glove (10% crit) with 4 auto attacks to give the bootless gunman only a 33 movement speed increase. In later levels, and with the help of Boots of Swiftness, it can certainly be argued that Jhin may have superior movement to a declared "high mobility" marksman, typically one with a dash.

Now let's understand why you can be self-possessed with the Jhin pick. The reason that I believe that every ADC player should play Jhin, the reason I'm taking the time to talk about this at all, comes from my years of playing in the bot lane, as well as the living meme of "my team's holding me back." I believe Jhin holds the tools to carry practically any team. By this, I certainly don't mean the team where you have 2 DC's and your midlaner has 500 ping. I'm talking about the games where your top laner fed early, is blaming the jungler who got counter jungled and died early, your mid laner is barely keeping up to the roaming Zed, and bot lane has been nothing but a farm fest. Some might not see a difference in these two very different scenarios, but the truth is that the latter is anyone's game to win.

When you play Jhin, it's important to understand and be humbled by how powerful his skill ceiling is. Look at the numbers! He is not a cookie-cutter ADC, he's designed to tip the scales in these come-from-behind games. He can fill this role more than any other ADC. With that being said, it's your discipline as an ADC to identify what kind of team you are working with. If your jungle Rek'Sai is 5/5/10 in the mid game but is upset that nobody is following her engage, you and your duo partner sure as hell better back him up in the next team fight. You can't control what a player does, you can only try to have great mechanics and be able to identify where you'll be needed on a team full of egos. Don't simply be another ego, understand how to carry.

A Jhin player that is aware of his/her surroundings may not even take damage during a fight. Back at it again with the importance of mental approach; it's not about what your team did wrong, it's about what you can do better. Your play is not perfect because the game was designed to deny you that perfection!

I believe this to be the strongest approach to the game overall, but its value shines with the tools that Jhin has to work with. Here's a few parting tips that I find to be useful every time I pick this beast:

-Identify two forms of engage on your team. Usually it will be my support and top laner. Since I've identified this, it's much easier to pull the trigger on W when they engage because I know that they can.

-Identify the two biggest forms of burst on the enemy team. Some games you could have threats of being popped listed all the way from bot to top lane. Find the biggest two and make them priority targets. This does not mean to play reserved, it means to play around priority targets that pose the greatest threat to you. There's no worse feeling as an ADC than getting popped by a 0/0/0 LeBlanc before you can auto attack once.

-Play to the game at hand. Getting 20 assists still gives you gold and map pressure.

-Be liberal with your ult, but make sure you're safe from burst champions.

-Jungle chokes can be your best friend or your worst enemy, but rule of thumb is to NOT fight in a dark jungle, even if it's your own.

- Keep track of your auto clip. The second worse feeling after getting popped would be flashing on a low health target, and all you see is Jhin reloading. (PSA: flash is not an auto attack reset and will not reload your clip..)

-Don't risk losing pressure, but auto 3>Q>auto 4 can deal an insane amount of damage to targets below 50% health. With W and R available after successfully winning this trade, you're sure to blow summoner spells and/or get a kill.

-When you see a squishy support clearing your team's baron wards, use W from a safe distance to aggro Nashor who will then lay a few beefy auto attacks into the enemy. That'll show 'em to clear your vision.

I hope this helped anyone out there think about Jhin differently. In the right hands he can be a complete monster on the Fields of Justice. Now go get those Mastery 7 icons.